Simon Joyner is among America’s best songwriters, so says Gillian Welch, Conor Oberst, Kevin Morby, and others. "Singer-songwriter" is a frustratingly confining term; to truly understand exactly just how confining, look no further than the recorded works of Simon Joyner, an artist whose work consistently transcends the narrow parameters of genre classifications and record shop bin cards. Though his music has always honored, reckoned with - wrestled with - the tradition set forth by his songwriting forebears (Cohen, Van Zandt, Ochs, Dylan, Reed to name a few), Joyner can always be counted on to defy expectations; as a lyricist, melodicist, and arranger, Joyner likes to keep us on our toes.
Joyner traverses the human predicament, in general, and the American psyche specifically, using fiction to tell difficult truths. Characters struggle through personal crises while absorbing America's currently failing experiment.
Joyner's 19th studio album, continues this upward trend. While intrinsically linked to the personal grief of 2024's 'Coyote Butterfly', the autobiographical album Joyner made in the wake of his son's death, this new album explores the concept of tough love as a dichotomy applied to various fictional relationships including romantic, familial, and political. This balancing act comes through in vivid portrayals of everyday heartache and in the exploration of political rage and the betrayals of the American Dream.
One of the marvels of Joyner's catalog is how his patterns don't repeat but transform. Knowing nods to Cohen, Dylan, and the Velvets have been part of his songwriting since the early lo-fi days, but the ways these touchstones get infused keep changing. While Joyner's ragged acoustic songs are in the spotlight, they're prodded by electric guitars and imbued with experimental tendencies. Rock songs split the difference between minimal grooves learned from 'Loaded'-era Velvet Underground and the ecstatic rhythmic weirdness of Can. By the time we arrive at the penultimate track, 'Anniversary Song', the ghost vocals and scratches of microtonal synth have blurred the lines between Joyner's folk singer heart and his avant garde spirit.
All of this leads to the 20-minute title track which closes 'Tough Love', an eviscerating plunge into a seemingly bottomless pit of regret, survivor's guilt, and unvarnished grief. Borrowing a repetitious structure from Lou Reed's narrated suite, 'Street Hassle', and combined with the full-side testimonial of Dylan's 'Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands', Joyner narrates from the perspective of his departed son speaking to his father and laying out his every failure and brutally highlighting how none of it can be undone. Soon, though, this agony opens up into something transcendent, in both its elegant imagery and ethereal atmospherics. The final moments of the album grant permission for self-forgiveness and hopefully someday, understanding.
TRACK LISTING
1. Annelie
2. Wild Palms
3. Drowning Man
4. Two Black Irises
5. Vagabond
6. Isn't This How the Story Always Begins?
7. Winter Says
8. Last Call for Karaoke
9. In a Room Like This
10. How to Talk to Your Man
11. Allegiances
12. Anniversary Song
13. Tough Love
